


Omelets and Domesticity

by doctorsquared



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Author Is Sleep Deprived, Developing Friendships, Domestic Fluff, Food, Gen, POV Tony Stark, Post-Avengers (2012), Sleep Deprivation, Sleepy Tony, Steve Rogers & Tony Stark Friendship, Wordcount: Over 1.000, so if there are any blatant mistakes oh well it's four in the morning I'm goin' to bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 19:33:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7374607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorsquared/pseuds/doctorsquared
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate Titles: Friendship Overtures of the Edible Kind OR<br/>Why is Captain America in My Kitchen?</p><p>In which Tony is tired and Steve is nice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Omelets and Domesticity

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. Also, blame any OOC-ness on the sleep-deprivation, both mine and the character's. I'm kidding. Or am I?  
> This isn't actually a humor piece, though as the night wears on, it sounds more and more like one....

        

            In the morning, Tony Stark was silent. When he left the security of his lab to rejoin the outside world that was mostly devoid of the blue glow of holograms and the buzz of complex equations, his brain would go to standby. There was no need to talk because his bots weren’t there to receive instructions and the rest of the team wasn’t there to, well, generally ignore his word vomit. And yes, he may be a bit angsty over the latest failed beta test, sue him. He has a whole army of lawyers: you would _lose_.

            Tony scowled at the cheerily shiny refrigerator and yanked it open, fishing for leftover Thai. He failed to notice the movement behind him.

            “I think Pepper made you a smoothie with vegetables in it.” Steve said and pointed over Tony’s right shoulder.

            Too tired to startle, the genius blinked at the enormous arm in his vision, fighting a demented urge to bite it just because he could. And yes, he may be a bit punch-drunk from exhaustion, too.

            In the end, he irritably swatted the arm away and snatched up the berry-hued drink, circumnavigating Steve without looking at him. Tony plopped onto a barstool in front of the blue glass slab that extended from the kitchen island and dropped like a waterfall to the ground, forming a table.

            “It’s a green smoothie,” he grumbled, wrapping his less-than-clean hands around the cool glass possessively. Steve shrugged, his back to Tony as he collected breakfast supplies from the still-open fridge. “Doesn’t look green,” he mumbled. Bumping the door closed with his hip, the super-soldier carried an egg carton, onion, red bell pepper, a carton of baby mushrooms, and a tomato stacked in his arms to the countertop beside the stove. He turned back to glance at Tony.

            “Where’s the – ?”

            Taking a swig of his smoothie, Tony mutely pointed first to the cupboard above the stovetop and then the drawer beside it. Steve opened the cupboard, selecting salt, pepper, smoked paprika, and allspice from the revolving seasoning array and spray-on cooking oil – coconut. He leaned back from the cupboard, jiggling the aluminum can at Tony. “Won’t this taste like - ?”

            “No. Use the truffle oil if it makes you feel better.”

            Steve scrunched up his face, set the can of coconut oil next to the other supplies, and rummaged in the cooking utensil drawer for a whisk and a spatula that wasn’t silicone. Then he dug out a Mami, non-stick, frying pan (designed by Stefano Giovannoni) from a cabinet below the countertop and set it on the stove, spraying it with oil and cracking eggs into a bowl to beat.

            Tony suddenly realized he was staring at Captain America cooking in his kitchen. _On his floor of the Tower._

            “What are you doing?” he demanded.

            “Making breakfast,” Steve mildly responded as he started to wash the bell pepper and tomato simultaneously because his hands were that big.

            “No, what are you doing on _my floor_ , cooking stuff in _my kitchen_. What’s wrong with yours?” Frankly, this didn’t make sense to him this early in the morning. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation, but right now he couldn’t see it. “What’s wrong with using your kitchen _or_ the one on the communal floor?”

            “Nothing,” Steve assured, pulling out a cutting board from somewhere and dicing the tomato, then the onion. _Of course. Captain America is immune to even onion tears._ “Bruce said you’d had trouble in the lab, so I thought you could use some breakfast before you bury yourself in work again.” He started to chop the mushrooms and bell pepper into smaller pieces.

            “Oh.

            “…Why?”

            Steve just barely smiled and swiped the vegetable pieces off the cutting board into the egg mixture and continued preparing breakfast. Tony stared down into in his purple-red stained glass for a few seconds before getting up to put it in the dishwasher. He reached up above the appliance to select a new glass for water from the kitchen cabinet and hesitated. One or two? Was Rogers planning on _eating_ in his kitchen, as well? He grumbled and grabbed two, so his conscience would stop prickling in the back of his head. One he filled with water from the refrigerator’s top-of-the-line filters and the other he filled with orange/grapefruit cocktail.

            “Hope you like citrus.”

            “Hm?” Steve craned his neck to look back in his direction. “Oh, orange juice is fine.” The super-soldier nodded.

            Tony clunked the yellowish-orange drink down in front of the chair furthest from his, on the other side of the tabletop. He peeked over Rogers’ right shoulder at the golden, egg pancake with multicolored bits solidifying in the frying pan and crept back to his chair.

            “What if I don’t like omelets?” Tony asked. He couldn’t help heckling his impromptu chef.

            “You do,” Steve replied confidently.

            Tony snorted. “You don’t know that.”

            “Natasha told me.”

            His jaw dropped. Thankfully, Steve was still finishing up the egg pancakes.

            _Why that sneaky, eavesdropping, spider of a spy! How does she even remember that after the whole Expo fiasco? Wait, you two talk about me?_

            “Plates?” the soldier asked succinctly.

            “Above the dishwasher, Capsicle.”

            Steve rolled his eyes and got down two sturdy plates painted maroon and black and royal blue, depositing an omelet on each, and setting them gently down in front of Tony and himself, respectively. He opened and closed a couple drawers before finding forks and knives in the drawer to the right of the dishwasher, adjacent to the glimmering black fridge. Steve stared at it for a second before carefully depositing the silverware on the glass kitchen table.

            “Are there computer screens on the refrigerator?”

            “Yep,” Tony quipped, snatching up a fork, ignoring the knives. “So you can see what’s inside without letting all the cold air out. It logs what you’re running low on and can automatically order it, too.” He viciously stabbed his omelet. He was hungry, dangit. “I didn’t think you’d want something that high-tech, so I didn’t upgrade yours.” The engineer chewed down on a big portion of his omelet and his eyes went wide. _Oh this is way better than mine._ Steve Rogers was a good cook. Who knew?

            Steve, unnoticing, continued discussing the refrigerator. “That’s pretty neat. Do you think you could…upgrade mine? If it isn’t too much trouble …”

            Tony flapped his left hand, gobbling down his omelet. “Sure. No problem. I didn’t know you knew how to cook,” he remarked casually.

            Steve shrugged. “Yeah, after I woke up, I couldn’t afford to eat at restaurants for every meal, so I decided to teach myself. Well, reteach, really. I already knew some things my mother and Mrs. Barnes showed me.” Steve cut and ate a forkful of his omelet, somberly eyeing the water-like surface of the table.

            The billionaire discreetly looked up from beneath his eyelashes, overtly paying attention to his delicious breakfast, but sensing the soldier’s more serious mood. His teeth crunched on an onion and he impulsively decided to say something to maybe fix it or make it worse.

            “My mom was a terrible cook. And Dad stayed far away from anything domestic. But Jarvis knew how. He’d make these great gourmet roast beef sandwiches.” He grinned down at what little was left of his omelet. “And he’d bake these awesome desserts. Nothing standard, mind you, it always had to be something special, especially for parties, but he’d make me cookies if I was good. He tried to teach me when I was eight to make an omelet, but I wasn’t very interested at the time. I kind of remember how, though.” Well…Pepper probably wouldn’t agree. For a moment, he considered mentioning how Aunt Peggy had also known how to bake desserts because of Jarvis, but decided it might be a bit much. He cautiously looked up at Steve to see if sharing happy memories worked to lighten the soldier’s mood a little. Steve’s eyes were big and blue and a little bit…shiny? Uh-oh.

            “Please don’t cry on me. I shouldn’t have brought up Howard, sorry, I forgot. I, uh – ”

            Steve smiled and shook his head. “Tony, I’m not going to burst into tears if you bring up the past. I’m fine. It’s just…I’ve never heard you say so much about yourself before.”

            The engineer’s eyes narrowed. “Uh, yeah you have. I talk about myself all the time: narcissistic, remember? You saw Romanoff’s assessment. And I’m not talking about myself. I’m reminiscing about the culinary arts.”

            Steve smiled indulgently and Tony frowned at him, forking the rest of his omelet into his mouth.

            “So, who’s Jarvis? I assume your A.I. can’t cook, right J.A.R.V.I.S.?”

            _“Regrettably, I cannot, Captain.”_

“Edwin Jarvis was J.A.R.V.I.S.’s namesake. He was our butler. An old family friend. I based some of J.A.R.V.I.S.’s primary personality programming and voice template on him.” Tony swallowed. “But he died before J was done.”

            _Way to go, Tony. Let’s make it more morose, brilliant idea!_

            Steve Rogers sat quietly, knowing Tony wouldn’t want sympathy or pity, just like he hadn’t when Agent Coulson was killed.

            The billionaire nervously tapped his fork against his plate.

            “That’s a shame. J.A.R.V.I.S. is amazing,” Rogers complimented sincerely. 

            _“Thank you, Captain Rogers. You are quite remarkable, yourself.”_

Tony mock-glared at the ceiling. “Hey! No schmoozing Captain America! I’m supposed to be your favorite!”

            _“As you say, Sir.”_

            J.A.R.V.I.S.’s creator rolled his eyes and slid his empty plate aside. Moment over. Thank goodness.

            “Right. I’m still hungry. Are you still hungry?” Tony blurted, eyeing Steve who smiled sheepishly and nodded. He rattled on, “Donuts. We need donuts. You ever eat donuts inside a giant donut before? You should definitely put that on your bucket list. We could fly to Inglewood right now – we’ll need to sneak past Natasha. She always follows me whenever I go out for donuts. It’s creepy.”

            Steve pretended to consider it, collecting both of their used plates, glasses, and silverware, and turned around to rinse them in the sink.

            “Or, we could go to this bakery I know that’s right here in New York,” Steve suggested brightly. “They’ve got excellent bagels. I think I saw donuts there in the glass case, too.” He placed the dishes in the washer and wiped his damp hands on his jeans.

            Tony raised both eyebrows, muttered, “Were you raised in a barn?” and jabbed a finger pointedly at another cupboard that stored the kitchen linens. The blonde just shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets. _Figures._

            The genius stood. “Bagels, huh?” he said and walked toward the elevator, Steve Rogers trailing behind.

            “Yeah,” Steve’s voice drifted out as the doors began to close. “I really like their sesame seed ones.”

**Author's Note:**

> I even fit in a blatant comic reference. Yay, me!  
> In case anyone was wondering, this is what the waterfall kitchen table looks like: http://www.thinkglass.com/glass-countertop-residential/kitchen/glass-countertops-kitchen  
> [look at image 4 in the slideshow]  
> It reminds me of the Malibu mansion...  
> I imagine Tony's kitchen arranged differently from the picture, though. I even drew a super rough diagram for myself that I'm NOT showing to anyone because it's embarrassing. The island-table combo is in the center, with the island end toward the stove (a.k.a. what I'm going to call relative north). The countertops, cupboards, and appliances are lined up in a lowercase 'n' shape surrounding it, open at the bottom. So, a countertop (with no cupboards above it) at the west connects perpendicularly to a horizontal strip including the stove (with cupboards on either side and below) at the north, which connects to the perpendicular strip of appliances and cupboards (that face the island-table): the dishwasher comes first and then the fridge next to it. There's a convection oven somewhere, maybe in the left corner?  
> Why is all this important? It's not. I have no idea why I'm describing it.


End file.
